National U.S. statistics show that approximately 20% of accidents on construction sites involve cranes. “For the 11 years 1984-94, 502 deaths occurred in 479 incidents involving cranes in the construction industry” (Suruda, p. 4), which amounts to an average of 44 fatal crane accidents per year, with an average of one human life lost per crane accident. The number of crane-related deaths are on the rise since those statistics were compiled, due to a number of factors, including an increase in the number of construction projects, an increase in the size of the construction projects, and an increase in the System and method used for configuration of an inspection compliance tool with machine readable tags and their associations to inspected components economic pressures to complete construction projects on time and under budget, which have resulted in shortcuts many consider to be unsafe.
A rash of crane accidents is occurring around the country resulting in national and international news. Tight economic conditions and high energy prices have led to large numbers of large scale energy-related construction projects, such as the extension and building of new oil refineries. These construction projects are on extremely tight time and budget schedules because of the economic realities of high energy, and specifically petroleum, prices. The result has been an unprecedented number of deadly, costly, and highly publicized crane accidents.
For example, on Jun. 18, 2008, a crane accident at a Texas oil refinery killed four people and injured six others. The crane was not scheduled to be operated that day. On May 30, 2008, a crane accident in New York City killed two workers when the boom and cab snapped off the turntable and fell, apparently because of a bad weld in the rotating plate. Proper inspections were not carried out on the crane, and the New York City Buildings Department Head was fired by the Mayor over this and another preceding incident. On Mar. 25, 2008, a crane accident in Miami killed two workers in the fall of a 20-foot section that was being lifted to extend the height of the crane. The safety personnel who made the safety rules did not follow their own safety rules of evacuating the construction management office in the event of a pick. On Mar. 15, 2008, a second crane accident in New York City killed seven people when a piece of nylon webbing broke, dropping a six-ton metal collar that was being installed. It dislodged the collar below, disconnecting the crane from the building and allowing it to topple over onto a residential building. Proper inspections were not carried out on the crane, the construction site had numerous safety violations, and neighbors, residents, and passer-by's complained and lodged reports of unsafe activity and operation of the crane.
Many parties have sought unsuccessfully to prevent crane accidents, including OSHA, the construction industry, and various researchers. Strong heavy construction industry growth, especially in the oil, natural gas, and energy field, as a result of the high price of crude oil and energy, has resulted in the hiring of many workers, a large proportion of whom may be inadequately trained.
It is evident that many crane hazards go unnoticed or that efforts to prevent crane accidents are not effectively implemented. Crane hazards on sites should be detected through rigorous inspections of construction sites and eliminated through effective preventive approaches.
Traditional approaches that have provided crane safety equipment and proper training have not reduced the number of crane accidents. Traditional crane safety training is not sufficient to enable crane operators to detect and eliminate crane hazards.
Motivating crane operators, workers, independent contractors, management, and apparently safety officers themselves to fully follow all safety guidelines at all times is perhaps the greatest challenge.
Texas has led the nation with 26 crane-related fatalities in 2005 and 2006, according to federal statistics. Cranes in Texas operate without any state or local oversight.
Human lives are lost unnecessarily every year because recognized and known safety procedures are not followed, overlooked, or even ignored. Construction accidents are not only bad for worker morale, but they bring bad press and hinder worker recruitment. They are also huge financial and logistical liabilities. Even with safety programs in place, historical claims data indicates construction is a potentially highly risky venture financially, especially in large industrial projects. The cost of risk can be quantified—there has been a national average of 82 crane fatalities per year from 1997-2006 (Bureau of Labor Statistics), and an average of 1 crane fatality per $8 B of construction value (Construction Management Magazine). Direct & indirect accident costs averaged at 3.8% of construction value, which include workers' compensation payments, general liability, and litigation expenses (Business Roundtable). In addition, for every dollar of direct cost, there was $2.20 of indirect costs.
For example, Zachry Construction Company estimates that one day's delay in the construction of an oil refinery or power plant can cost Zachry over $300,000 in liquidated damages arising from guaranteed delivery contracts with the plant owners. A fatality, or any serious accident at a construction site, inevitably leads to delays of multiple days or even weeks, disrupting construction work, both for site clean-up, internal inspections, as well as OSHA inspections.
Some costs may have balance sheet implications, yet are hard to define, especially for large complex projects involving petroleum. The time required to replace mission critical infrastructure damaged in an accident is generally long. The environmental impact can be large as well. For example, the oil spill of the Exxon Valdez oil tanker in Alaska resulted in a judgment of $2.5 B. The loss of corporate reputation and goodwill, intangible and often unrecoverable assets, is substantial in the event of a crane accident.
Cranes are but one example of industrial equipment that is subject to inspection for compliance with safety or security standards. Other possible industrial equipment includes vehicles such as airplanes, buses, trains, subways, cars, ships, and trucks, public buildings, privately-owned buildings, residential homes, highways, train tracks, airport runways, ship harbors, bridges, underground tunnels, shelters, dams, conventional power plants, nuclear power plants, particle colliders, oil extraction sites, oil refineries, communication towers, data centers, sewage systems, water treatment plants, water wells, reservoirs, and any other equipment or the like.
Examples of inspections on industrial equipment other than cranes include the inspection of commercial airplanes with FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) standards, the inspection of communication towers with FCC (Federal Communications Commission) standards, the inspection of dams with state dam safety standards such as NJAC (New Jersey Administrative Code) 7:20, the inspection of nuclear power plants with IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) standards, and other similar inspections under various public safety standards. Other inspection compliance requirements are associated with renewable energy systems and distributed energy systems, including wind turbines, solar photovoltaic, solar thermal plants, co-generation plants, biomass-fueled power plants, carbon sequestration projects, enhanced oil recovery systems, and the like.
The present inventors have designed and patented an industrial inspection system. However, the industrial inspection system typically requires complicated and extended setup and configuration operation, including the installation and setups of hundreds, or thousands, or RFID tags, associated meta-data, associated reference documents, etc. Therefore, as recognized by the present inventors, a system, method and apparatus for setting up, installing, and configuring an industrial inspection system is highly desirable.
It is against this background that various embodiments of the present invention were developed.